10% of UNRWA employees in Gaza have ties to terror groups

‘It isn’t just a case of a few bad apples involved in the October 7th massacre; the institution as a whole is a haven for Hamas’ radical ideology.’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Around 10% of Gaza UNRWA staff have ties to Islamic terror groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Following an investigation into the allegation that 12 UNRWA workers were actively involved in the October 7th Hamas massacres, more details are surfacing about the extent of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s involvement with terror organizations in Gaza.

Responding to the allegation, 10 countries, including the US and the UK, have announced they will stop funding UNRWA.

For years, Israel has said that UNRWA has been involved with educating children in Gaza schools to hate Israel and has been colluding with the Hamas terrorist group.

These allegations are standing up to scrutiny as more details come to light about the extent of UNRWA’s involvement with Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

UNRWA has admitted that it was aware Hamas was storing weapons underneath Gaza schools and that Hamas had built tunnels underneath UNRWA buildings and civilian facilities.

The former head of UNRWA’s union in Gaza was fired in 2017 after Israel found out he had been elected to Hamas’ top political leadership.

The IDF found letters from Hamas’s military wing to Gaza’s education ministry requesting teachers be given the day off for training sessions leading up to October 7th.

A clearer picture is also emerging about the 12 UNRWA employees who participated in the attacks.

Seven were primary or secondary school teachers, including two math teachers, two Arabic language teachers, and one primary school teacher.

A social worker was assisted in taking the corpse of a slain Israeli soldier back to Gaza and was also busy distributing ammunition and  “coordinating vehicles on the day of the attack,” the report said.

A Khan Younis school counselor and his son kidnapped a woman during the massacre.

Earlier this month, UN Watch published that it had found that the internal Telegram channel used by 3,000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza was “replete with posts” celebrating the slaughter starting “minutes after it began.”

It is estimated around 1,200 of UNRWA’s 12,000 employees in Gaza have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In addition, 23% of UNRWA’s male workers have Hamas ties, a higher percentage than the 15% of the civilian population in Gaza.

Around 50% of UNRWA employees in Gaza have close relatives who belong to Hamas or other Islamic terrorist groups.

“UNRWA’s problem is not just a few bad apples involved in the October 7 massacre,” said a senior Israeli government official. “The institution as a whole is a haven for Hamas’ radical ideology.”